Hack The Planet
I was personally invited to attend the first ever annual Hack The Planet,
organized by Major League Hacking, the leaders of the Hackathon
scene. This was due to my outstanding performance and attendance during the 2014-2015
hackathon season, as that was the season where I really started to shine,
placing in the top ten at MHacks IV, winning best mobile at HackCWRU, and many more.

Grand Prize Winners at the Fashion Tech Hackathon
Here is a picture of my posing with my teammates after we picked up
the Grand Prize at the 3rd annual Kent State University Fashion Tech
Hackathon, during Spring of 2016. We made two projects, all under the
umbrella of Memory Technology. We created a way for you to not forget things
at home with the use of bluetooth beacons and a mobile app, and also a watch
that would help alzheimer's patients keep their mind trained and their
caretaker informed of their behaviors and their brain activity.

Giving a Presentation about Leap Motion at HacKSU
After creating a shooting gallery game at Hack Illinois 2014, I was asked
by the leaders of Hacksu to give a presentation to the group, which
is Kent State's computer science and hacker group on campus. I was
more than happy to accept and present this awesome new technology
to everyone else so that they can start having fun with it too
and make awesome games and apps like me. I showed them a demo of my
shooting gallery game, in which your hand gestures allow you to aim
and shoot and reload your weapon. It's very cool.

Winner of Best Mobile App Award at HackCWRU
My project for the Hackathon held at Case Western Reserve University
was a mobile app that I developed along side with designer Matt
Allen and programmer Nic Linscott called Oh (on the android app store), that allows you to import
your favorite contacts and with a swipe left or right, you would sent them
one of two direct text messages: 'Here', or 'On My Way', which was
done to minimize texting while driving, which is when you would
have to send either of those texts most of the time. We won the
Best Mobile App award and I recieved a Nexus 7 tablet!

Professional Experience

F&E Payment Pros. November 2015-PresentKiosk Software Engineer. Building and designing new software
for payment kiosks using ASP.NET 5 MVC 6.

Awards and Honors

Grand Prize Winner: Fashion/Tech Hackathon at Kent State University, 2015Top 10 Team out of over 240: MHacks IV 2014Top 5 and best Leap Motion Hack: Kent Hack Enough at Kent State University 2014Best Mobile App: HackCWRU at Case Western Reserve University 2015Top 10 and Best Real World Application: OH/IO 2015 at Ohio State University

What do I do?

Major League Hacker

I am a Major League Hacker!
I have attended and competed in
over 15 Hackathons in the last three
years. I have recently won the grand
prize at KSU's Fashion/Tech Hackathon,
on top of placing in the top 10 and winning
Best Real World Application at OH/IO 2015,
placing in the top 10 atMHacks IV,
Top 5 and winning Best Leap Hack
at KHE 2014, and winning Best Mobile Hack at
HackCWRU 2015. I was also personally invited
to participate in the first annual Hack The
Planet in Mountain View, California.

Radio Personality

I'm a Radio Host now!
I have recently started hosting a show on
internet radio website krmaradio.com called
Triple Z Game Show. My two co-hosts and I
spend our time on the air talking about and discussing
different things in regards to video games and the
game industry as a whole. My concentration during
my degree was in Game Programming, so I have quite a bit
of experience with making games, in addition to long years
of gaming. My co-hosts are also no strangers to games
or game development, as one of them graduated with game design
and the other with graphics design. We bring our experiences
and points of views to our listeners all over the world.

Performer

I'm a Rockstar!
I started playing guitar during August of 2009, and since then
I have been in multiple bands, performed countless times as
a lead guitarist in bands in addition to playing solo shows
with me improvising over my own created backing tracks
and covering songs I like. I love performing and playing
music and somehow I want to incorporate it into what I
do for a living. Or at least keep on playing as long as I can.

Games and Projects

Capsule Man! My very first game project!

During the third year of my undergraduate studies,
I took an Intro to Video Game Programming class that focused on
Microsoft XNA and Unity3D. The final project was a Unity3D project,
and due to some creative differences with my group, I ended up having
to do a whole project alone in a week to get this in on time, and
I couldn't have been more proud of what I have accomplished for that short
amount of time and for this being my first ever game. It has two stages, a topdown/
first person shooter level and a 2-d side-scroller level. The game features
AI that patrol and attack you when you're close, pickups that let you upgrade your
weapon, health pickups, checkpoints, music, particle effects, and much more. Check out
the video!

Star Wars VR Pod Racer!

During BitCamp 2015, Matthew Allen and I really wanted to
make something in the Unreal Engine, as we wanted to grow
our portfolio of games made using it as well as our skills
using the actual engine. So, we decided to have fun with it
and make a Star Wars VR Pod Racing game. We even streamed our development
live on twitch.tv and ended up on a VR news website with an article written
about our little game, which made us feel awesome! I programmed the game using
Unreal Engine's visual scripting tool called blueprints, as it allowed for us
to be able to prototype the game quicker and iterate faster for the short
amount of time we had during the hackathon. We had a lot of fun making it,
and we had features that included laps, best lap time, best total time,
checkpoints, speed boosts, and hover mechanics. Check out the video, I hope you
like it, and may the Force be with you!

LeapVR DJ! Be a Virtual DJ!

MHacks IV was a big hackathon for me. This was the first time
that I used the Oculus Rift, and I actually met the CEO of Oculus
at that hackathon. It was during the rise of popularity for the oculus,
during the time of the DK2. The Oculus still was not that popular with
the hackathon scene but it was starting to grow so we decided to hop on early
and see what it's all about. It was amazing, and I loved developing with the oculus
rift. I created the game using Unity3D and the game put you in the shoes of a DJ
at a busy club featuring smoke machines, strobe lights, balls that shoot fire
particles when you look at it, a minigame where you do certain gestures using the
leap motion to get a score, and of course, the DJ part, which at this point
was a button that altered the music and made it seem like you were
a DJ applying effects to music. It was completely virtual as the use of the Leap
motion controller meant you used your actual hands and saw them in the game,
making it more immersive.

DressYou, the virtual dressing room!

This is a different kind of game. It's more of a "simulator". It was
made with Unity3D, and the idea was to give women a model to look at
and see how the clothes would look on them. For the purpose of the demo,
we used a bodyscan of our team mate who was the person who came up
with the idea, and we used models made of clothes that she designed fitted
onto the model when the buttons are pressed. It's pretty simple, but the purpose
was to have a proof of concept demo to present.

LeapShooter, shoot em up!

This was the first game that I made using the Leap Motion
controller. This was the first time I delved into the realm of
virtual reality. Using hand gestures as input instead of a controller
or a keyboard and mouse is the coolest thing I've experienced in a while
and only because it actually worked really well. The leap motion
uses IR sensors that accurately capture each finger individually and each
hand seperately and each gesture you do is easily recognized and turned into
code using their brilliant API. So using this cool tech, I decided to make a
fun western style shooter game with classic moving targets. Check out the video!

SurfVR, surf's up, in VR!

In the spirit of being in California for the first time and being
personally invited to attend and take part in the first
annual Hack the Planet, Matt Allen and I decided to make a Virtual
Reality Surfing Experience, which came out of the thought that this
is a sport that barely has any games on the market, and we could start
something fresh. We used the Unreal Engine and made a game where you are a
surfer on a surf board in the water going in the direction you look and
collecting things out in the ocean that increase your score. It's a fun and
immersive experience due to the brilliant buoyancy effect of the water and the
amazing visuals and lighting effects of the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately I do not
have a video of it, but here is a photo with a nice scene from the game!